Was Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey worth it? – poll

Lance Armstrong admitted using drugs to Oprah Winfrey but was his confession worth it? Photograph: George Burns/Reuters

When Elton John declared sorry to be the hardest word to say, he neglected to mention the problem of sounding like you mean it. Lance Armstrong did not struggle to say the word during his interview with Oprah Winfrey. Instead, Armstong struggled to sound genuine.

Winfrey started the interview with a bang, forcing Armstrong to admit that his seven Tour wins were aided by doping. He did not bat away the quick-fire questions and did not stand in the way of telling us what we already knew.

At times Armstong's oration was impressive. He was direct, authoritative and did not look to hide from his faults: "I don't want to accuse anybody else. I don't want to talk about anybody else. I made my decisions. They are my mistakes, and I am sitting here today to acknowledge that and to say I'm sorry for that."

As well as apologising, Armstrong was smart enough to empathise with the people who still doubt him: "When I hear that there are people who will never believe me, I understand that. One of the steps of this process is to say sorry. I was wrong, you were right."

Armstrong was on a mission to fix his public image, but the whole exercise was weakened by his need to apologise. In another world, where his accusers had not been so tenacious and he had not set himself up as both a victim and a hero, Armstrong believes he could have avoided this whole charade. Speaking about his return to the sport in 2009, he said: "We wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't come back", seemingly admitting that he was apologising because he had been caught.

Was Armstrong expressing remorse or just making the best of a bad situation? Was his contrition genuine or was this latest performance just another way for him to "control the narrative"?

Armstrong's confessions were undermined by his attempts to portray himself as a pragmatist doing what he needed to do to win. He presented himself as a born winner who pushed himself to stay ahead of the competition. Doping was his necessary evil: inexcusable in one sense, but understandable and essential in another. It was impossible to win clean, so he had to join the dopers. He was a tragic winner, like the scorpion in Aesop's fable who drowns himself as he cannot overcome his nature.

Instead of decrying the morality of cheating, Armstrong portrayed himself as a dreamer who "lost himself" in his pursuit of excellence. By taking on his circumstances and overcoming them, he became an embodiment of a bastardised American dream: "This story was so perfect for so long... You won the disease... it was this mythic perfect story."

If Armstrong's contrition was forced and incomplete, at least he was smart enough to distance himself from the bully who cheated, lied and sued his way through the past 20 years. He said he had been "ridiculous", a "jerk", "an arrogant prick" who is now "definitely embarrassed" by his behaviour. "That's not me today," he claimed. But, in one final act of reality, he admitted that he is "not the most believable guy in the world right now". What do you think: has Armstrong's confession changed your opinion of him?